A Letter to Hillary Clinton

I have a message for you. A message for you from all the girls and women that you have spent years sending a message to.

We woke up this morning and texted each other pictures of our broken, puffy faces. We wrote to each other about our children, who awoke in the middle of the night with nightmares about walls being built. We wrote to each other about how we had to explain to our daughters how a man who has sexually assaulted women just became the president of the United States. We wrote to each other as pregnant women, fearful of what the future holds, and what it no longer holds. We called each other with anger, with newfound strength, with a potent new understanding of the consequences of female power. I personally counted 38 texts of this kind sent from girlfriends this morning, and I sent them out in return.

I tell you all of this, Hillary, because more than anything it’s important to me—and to all of us—that you know how profoundly you have changed our lives. That your grace, your resilience, your strength has affected us on a seismic, preternatural level. You are this country’s litmus test—the test on which all future tests will be tested. Your candidacy was the mirror onto which the country reflected its giant, nasty girl love and its nasty girl hate, and you took it all for us over the course of this election. You became the star by which we will navigate our futures, a satellite that orbits us and the women that come after us, a marker of all the work we’ve done and all the work we still have left to do.

We had courage because you’ve always had courage. We got back up and kept fighting because you are the ultimate boxer. We didn’t stay quiet because you never stayed quiet. We want you to know that we see the work you have done, and we now know the work we still have to do. Through you, our eyes have been opened and we cannot un-know how much half of this country values women—including women themselves. Through you we now see, more clearly than ever, our own connections to each other, and by contrast, the disconnect between us. We see how much we love while still being unloved. We see how much we hate because of being hated. We see how much we have underestimated the national causes against us—against our bodies, our liberties, and our freedoms.

And we cannot look away from those things now. You did that. You did. You are a major part of a revolution that has been grinding inside each and every one us for generations. You were the person we could collectively point to and finally say, "There. That is how our power manifests. That is how our power threatens. That is how our power is mythologized. That is how our power is taken from us. That is how our power is earned. That is how our power will be reborn, handed down, and strengthened. That is how our power is dangerous, in the best possible way. That is how our power empowers."

More than ten years ago, Mary Steenburgen played my mom on the show Joan of Arcadia, and she told me about a woman I had to meet who was a good friend of hers. That woman was you. I heard you speak in Mary’s living room a few nights later, and I’ll never forget the feeling you gave me then. There is no word for that feeling. It lives in me like my unborn daughter does. It is the same feeling I felt last night as I sat next to Mary at the Javits Center in New York, watching the results come in. It is the same feeling I felt while writing poems about the lives and deaths of child actresses and the objectification of women in Hollywood. I felt it when I found out I was pregnant. I felt it when one of my best friends lost their child. I felt it when I was asked to lose weight, many times, for movies and television. I felt it when I watched my mother cry while holding her guitar, telling me she would never be good enough, as good as her father, the violin virtuoso. I felt it while hearing my father’s and my husband’s helpless anger over last night’s election. I felt it when I was a kid and got into fights with boys. I felt it when I was a teenager, and got into fights with other girls. I felt it when I was a child playing with Barbies, creating a Barbie army who wore swords and capes.

The revolution was already growing in me, even then. I felt it this morning, when I woke up and watched your concession speech—your words to all of us. Directly to us: You belong here. You must stay and fight.